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The question is:

How can I prevent Learning Loss over the summer months?

Parents often want to know what to do to support learning over the summer months. Though relaxation and reduced structure are often a part of summer vacation, parents can support learning without losing the “fun” of summer.

We often see articles that warn of “brain drain” over summer. It is important to allow kids to have free time and unstructured play. This is an important part of growing up. However, there are some fun activities that support academic gains made during the school year.

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Dear Parents

The weather is warm and skies are blue. The grass is green. Summer has come so quickly.

Our 3rd, 4th and 5th grade students have grown so much! They continue to learn and grow each day.

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Kensington Calendar

6/17 Report Cards mailed

6/21 Relay for Life (Fairview HS)

7/7- 3rd Grade OAA Summer 2014

7/11 Administration

2014-2015 School Year

8/18 Kensington Open House

• 5th grade (11:30-1:30 pm)

• 3rd grade (1-3 pm)

• 4th grade (10:30- 12:30 am)

8/20 First Student Day!

9/1 Labor Day

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Upcoming Events

□ June 17th

- report cards mailed

□ August 18th- Open House

□ 4th grade: 10:30am to 12:30pm

□ 5th grade: 11:30 to 1:30pm

□ 3rd grade: 1 to 3 pm

Contents

Guidance Corner 1

Dear Parents 1

Upcoming Events 1

Stop Summer Brain Drain 2

The Cure for Summer Brain

Drain 3

Melissa LIberatore

School Social Worker

June 2014

Volume 3, Issue 4

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Kensington Intermediate School Newsletter

Guidance Corner

You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives.

~Clay P. Bedford

Stop Summer Brain Drain

Adapted from

By Lisa Rosenthal

Think summer is a carefree time when kids should put away the books and cut loose? Think again. If you let your children just hang out, they may fall victim to “summer slide,” or the loss of knowledge and skills acquired during the school year.

Use It or Lose It

On average, students who don’t engage in summer learning lose the equivalent of two months’ worth of grade-level math and reading skills, according to the National Center for Summer Learning at Johns Hopkins University. “What I worry about a lot is summer reading loss, “ US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan recently commented in Education Daily. “You have kids who don’t have a lot of books at home and aren’t read to. You get kids to a certain point in June, and when they come back in September, they’re further behind than when they left you three months ago. It’s heartbreaking.”

Other ways kids lose ground over the break:

• Students typically score lower on standardized test at the end of summer vacation than they do at the beginning.

• Most tend to fall behind in math and spelling because they have fewer opportunities to practice these skills while on break.

• Teachers spend an average of four to eight weeks every fall reviewing material students have forgotten over the summer

• Kids tend to gain more weight when they are out of school- particularly those who are at high risk of obesity and spend a lot of time playing video games or watching tv.

Beyond The Classroom

Keeping up on their learning doesn’t mean that children should be studying vocabulary lists and doing math worksheets. Summer is the perfect time for children to discover that education isn’t limited to the classroom.

“You don’t want you kids to think that learning is only something that happens in places called schools,” says Susan K. Perry. “Rather, you want them to grasp that learning is fun and can go on anytime, anywhere, with handy materials, not only based on the instruction of an actual schoolteacher.”

Summer Schooling

Whether you are taking a trip to a far-off place or staying in your own neighborhood, there are ample opportunities for your children to grow and learn. Be careful not to over plan. “To avoid boredom, a child has to learn to be motivated on his or her own to a certain extent, and that is an acquired skill,” says Perry. “If every time your child says, ‘I’m bored’

Page 2 of 3

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KIS School Newsletter

It’s summertime. Breathe deeply. Hear the splash in the pool, the crunch of cicadas underfoot. For a few sweet weeks, let the chaos of the school year recede; forget about the schedules and stop rushing around.

You can almost do it, until the dreaded question pops up on the radio, in a newspaper or magazine, or as part of a discussion thread on the neighborhood mail list: What are you doing to prevent summer brain drain?

Just the name conjures images of multiplication tables oozing out of your child’s ears and onto a sandy beach. Brain drain- or summer learning loss as it’s sometimes less ominously referred to- is nothing new. It’s the impetus behind year- round school and the reason kids start their summer vacation with backpacks filled with math packets, summer reading lists and essay assignments. And it’s real.

Gary Huggins, chief executive of the National Summer Learning Association, says studies show that kids lose as much as two to three months of math and reading skills over the summer, with the losses being more marked among lower-income kids.

Additionally, a recent survey of teachers by his group found that 66 percent of them said they’re spending three to four weeks at the beginning of the school year teaching old concepts that have been forgotten.

“Summer is great as a break from school, but it doesn’t have to be a break from learning,” Huggins says.

So what’s a parent to do? Should we push our kids during the summer to help them get ahead? Do we use that time to help a child catch up to her classmates? Or do we let them decompress for nine months of endless deadlines and expectations?

Three months or so from now, we’ll send our kids back to school for another year of learning. So it seems fair that teacher should have some say in how we, as parents, deal with summer brain drain. With that in mind, I talked to three Washington area educators- at the elementary, middle and high school levels- about what they would like parents and kids to do this summer to be prepared for the new school year.

Elementary School

“Let them play,” are the first words that came from Mary Ellen Zavaleta, who teachers fourth grade at Cherry Run Elementary in Fairfax County.

Then, she almost apologizes for the advice. “At first, I thought that’s not important to say, but I think people are so anxious to keep their kids doing well that they go in the other direction,” she says. “Kids go to camps that are meant to help them advance or succeed academically when it might just be as well for these kids to just play.”

Still, Zavaleta is not above mixing playing and learning. Here are some suggestions.

• Talk to your child. “Summer is time to chat. Spend time getting to know your child, getting to know how they think about the world around them. And letting them get to know you.”

• Plan a vacation. Having the whole family involved in the planning of a trip can reinforce math skills (from determining a budget to how many days you spend at the beach vs. Disney). Figuring out what you want to do requires reading skills.

• Send postcards. While you’re on that vacation, have everyone in the family write some postcards. It helps with penmanship and makes kids sort through a lot of information to find the most important facts, and yet the space is small enough that even young kids won’t see it as a chore.

• Have a kid’s dinner night. Kids can come up with the shopping list, set the table, prepare the meal, decide the dinner conversation topic and clean up. Math and organization skills are used.

Adapted from

The Cure for Summer Brain Drain: Live a Little

By Tracy Grant

For full article go to

Page 3 of 3

KIS School Newsletter

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